Kill the 'Climate Corps' Before It Kills Us

The word "corps" generally calls to mind a military force fighting whose job is to protect the nation. But defending the nation is out of fashion at the moment, so the word, like so many others these days, has had to be repurposed. President Joe Biden has just proposed an $8 billion budget item to create a "Climate Corps" program with the mandate of "tackling climate change" by “end[ing] fossil fuel.” Which is to say, rather than defending a nation, this corps' goal is to impoverish one. The White House seems to think that curtailing the leasing of energy production on federal lands and inserting into the absurdly named Inflation Reduction Act more than $369 billion in green giveaways isn't enough. Here's Fox News reporting:

Enthusiastically supported by Green New Deal architects New York Democrat Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Democrat Senator Ed Markey, Biden’s Climate Corps would hire 50,000 government workers annually by 2031 with the explicit yet vague mission of "tackling climate change..." The Climate Corps has been likened to President Franklin Roosevelt’s Depression Era jobs program, but there has never been legislation nor appropriation of such an expansive government program without congressional approval.

The report goes on to point out that 50,000 staffers is more than the total number of employees at NASA and the E.P.A. combined. Another difference? "Both of those agencies have a clear mission and are funded through and accountable to Congress." Doubtless, this boondoggle will come under the oversight of John Podesta, who Biden just named “senior advisor to the president for international climate policies,” or "Climate Czar," taking on the role previously held by John Kerry.

Upon taking this new position, unsurprisingly Podesta gushed about Kerry’s achievements, which besides keeping himself in the public eye and privately jetting from one international climate conference to another, were nil. None of that helped Biden, who needs a geyser of money spread freely among left-wing supporters to carry him through the election at the end of the year. And who better than Podesta?

Moreover, oversight of this money gusher is likely to be blocked by the administration which already has a history of hiding green initiative payouts. Fox's Daniel Turner is right that congressional Republicans desperately need to stop this:

Congress can and should use the power of the purse to stop this boondoggle from moving forward. According to Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 of the U.S. Constitution, "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” Conservatives have learned the hard way about the difficulties in repealing government entitlement programs once enacted. Look no further than Obamacare, which Republicans tried and failed to unwind, despite controlling all three branches of government in 2017. As President Ronald Reagan once observed, "a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth."

But lets call this what it is -- a desperate attempt on the part of president Biden and his handlers to secure the votes of Zoomers, as they have increasingly alienated every other cohort. And this one is especially desperate, coming as it does in the wake of his various attempts to bail out indebted college graduates. Apparently all of those tax dollars were insufficiently persuasive to cinch the Gen Z vote, or at least inspire them to come out on election day. His next trick is to pay them to bang on doors and harangue people to sign petitions hamstringing the very energy production which allows them to sit on their couches in snug quarters playing video games and staring at TikTok.